Geography of present and past

I still don’t completely understand the geography of the murder of 3 boys who were hitchhiking and killed, but I spent a good deal of time with google maps today.  As far as I can tell, from what I read in the Times of Israel, the boys were hoping to head down route 367, out of Gush Etzion and down to Aviezer, reaching route 375 and heading through Beit Shemesh to the center of the country.

I drove down route 367 once.  It’s a long, winding road.  It was daytime.  I was coming from the funeral of Avraham David Moses in 2008 after he and 7 other boys were shot at the Merkaz HaRav Yeshiva.  I did not feel safe on this long winding road, passing by few towns, mostly all Arab towns, and finally a checkpoint, and then Neve Michael and Aviezer.  I breathed a sigh of relief when I saw the familiar route 375 and headed home, and I promised myself if I travelled to the Gush again I would go up route 60 and the main road to Alon Shvut, through the more travelled area at the top of the hills.

Near Aviezer, at the base of route 367, is Kibbutz Netiv HaLamed Hey.  The village was established on 16 August 1949 by demobilised members of the Daled Company of the Palmach's Harel Brigade, and was initially named Peled (an acronym for Plugot Daled, lit. Daled Company). It was later renamed after the 35 Haganah soldiers killed in a convoy to resupply the Gush Etzion kibbutzim during the 1947–1948 Civil War in Mandatory Palestine (Lamed-Heh is 35 in Hebrew numerals).

We drive near here often to go to the pool at Beit Guvrin.  We go down route 375 to Tzomet HaEla (corner of routes 375 and 38) and down route 38 to route 35.  But if you head east on route 35 from Beit Guvrin, you’ll be in the West Bank in about 2 kilometers, and you’ll pass Tarkumiya.  That was the home of the men who killed Christine Logan when she was hiking with a friend in the woods near our house in 2010.  Near Beit Guvrin, the road (Route 35) heads into the hills west of Hebron. 

Further north, route 375 heads up to Tzur Hadassah where I live, past the Hanot mosaic (Roman, now destroyed by vandals).  The path from the mosaic (thought to be a Roman roadside shop), heads down to Mayan Mata, and the ruins of an Arab town, I believe called Hanot.  That town was probably abandoned/evacuated/destroyed in October 1948 when most of the Arab towns in this area were attacked/cleared/vacated.  On the path going down is where Christine was murdered.  Before you head up the hills of route 375 coming from Emek HaEla, you can also see Roman pillars, collapsed, on the right side of the road. 

Somewhere between routes 375 and route 35 is where the boys bodies were found yesterday.  From what I saw in pictures, it seemed it was a hilly area, but maybe towards the lower end of the hills.  One article said it was terraces.  If you look on the map, you’ll see between routes 375 and 35 a pretty big and hilly area, and route 367 cuts diagonally through it heading northwest.  The Green Line cuts pretty sharply West here, meaning that the wide area inside the Green Line near 375 (we live at the northeast edge of it), narrows to a much smaller western area within the green line as you go south.  I don’t know what happened here in 1948-49, or to what extent the Green Line is following the contour of the hills.  I do know there aren’t really any Jewish settlements on route 35 between Beit Guvrin and Kiryat Arba (next to Hevron).   But south of route 35, I had not realized, is Tapuah, a settlement known for radical views and Kahanist politics.

Karmei Tzur is also in this area, but pretty far East near Route 60 and closer to Hebron/Kiryat Arba.  It’s important historically because it’s on the site of Beit Tzur, which figures heavily in 1 Maccabees as a southern entry point to the area of Judea.

Looking at the map now, it’s striking to me how this southern West Bank area is isolated from other areas – for both Arab and Jewish populations.  This southwest corner looks both empty and cut off.  For the Arab population, it is at quite a distance from Jerusalem and Beit Lehem, and farther still from Ramallah and Jenin in the northern West Bank.  There would geographically be connections from here to the low lands, the Ekron plain and the places ruled by Philistines in the past along the lowlands and the coast, all the way to Gaza.  Trade routes of Nabateans cut across this far north I think.  Idumeans were pushed out of the south-eastern areas and made their capital Maresha, near Beit Guvrin, in the second Temple period.  Earlier, in the time of the prophet Micah, Assyrians came down the coast, attacked these same areas, and pushed eastwards toward Hebron, across but maybe just across what is now the Green Line.  At the same time, the hill culture will have been different from the coastal culture.  (See the Geopolitics of Israel, Stratfor.)

One last geographic point – Rav Steinsaltz recommended we read Psalm 142, which is linked by tradition to David’s flight from Saul into the caves of Adulam.  These also fall in this region.  The Adulam caves park is found just east of route 38, near Nehusha, within the Green Line, north of route 35 and south of route 375.

May the memories of Naftali Fraenkel, Gil-ad Shaar and Eyal Yifrach be blessed and their souls elevated, and may we all take time to learn more about the geography and history of the lands in which they lived and died.

עליה לצור הדסה

This is something I read at our shul for Yom HaAtzma'ut - סיפור עליה

עליה לצור הדסה

בלילה הראשון שלי בארץ ישראל, בשנת 1977, שתיתי הרבה ויסקי עם החבר שלי לאותו קיץ שהכרתי אותו באותו ערב.

טיפסנו בגדר הבריכה של חוות הנוער בסן סימון בירושלים, גדר די גבוה.  שחינו, יצאנו, נתפסנו על ידי המדריכים.  זאת היתה תקופה יותר סובלנית להרפתקאות ולא נזרקנו מיד מתוכנית הקיץ.

כמה שבועות לאחר מכן, ביקרנו לשבוע במושב ליד בית שמש, שהשנה גיליתי היה מושב נוחם.  וכמה שבועות אחרי כן טיילנו בהר שמשם ראינו את המושב מלמעלה – אולי זה קרוב לנו כאן אך איניני יודעת איפה זה היה.  אני וחברה ראינו את המושב "שלנו" מרחוק ויצאנו דרך היער לקפוץ לשם להגיד שלום.  אחד המדריכים היה צריך ללכת אחרינו ולהחזיר אותנו באוטובוס.

אותו המדריך גר כיום ברחוב הפלמ"ח, בבנין שגרים בו חברים שלנו מקורס הכנה ללידה שעשינו לפני הלידה של גבי.  ראיתי אותו לפני כמה שנים והיה נדמה לי שהוא זוכר אותי - לא לשבח.

בשנת 1990-1991 גרתי בירושלים ברחוב וושינגטון.  כשחזרתי לארץ עם אלן במסגרת עליה, התקבלתי לעבודה כמעט ליד המקום שגרתי בו אז, וגרנו ברחוב טשרניחובסקי, לא רחוק ממקום ההרפתקאה הראשונה שלי בארץ.

כשהגענו לצור הדסה ולקהילה, בא אלינו להציג את עצמו דוד קריגר.  הדוד שלו, Seymour, היה מורה של אלן אחרי הגיור שלה ב1995 ולימד אותה להגיד שמע ישראל וואהבת בעל פה. 

אחרי שהגענו לצור הדסה, גילינו שאבא של רחל שבת ואבא שלי למדו ביחד באוניברסיטה, שסיימו ב1950 ו1951.

בשנת 1999 כתבתי שיר שדמיתי את עצמי לרקפת צומחת ליד אבן בהרי יהודה.  כל הרקפות שאי פעם נתנו לי בארה"ב מתו בקלות.  כאן נדמה לי שהן צומחות בלי שום מאמץ של אדם.

לא קשה לי להאמין במושג של "unseen hands",ידיים שמובילות אותנו למרות שאנו לא רואים אותם.

What do to with green beans - healthy food from Moosewood (adapted)

Steam or boil a pot of green beans
Fry an onion chopped small
Hard boil two eggs
Get 1/4 cup roasted almonds (or not roasted)

Mix this all in a food processor with a tablespoon or more of mayonnaise plus salt and pepper to taste.  You can also add a little lemon.  Chill and use as a sandwich spread.  It tastes a bit like chopped liver, but not really.

Books, fear and all that

It’s the end of 2^nd grade and my son, like most 2^nd graders in Israel at the end of the year, came home with a book report assignment.

Having no prior warning and with several other pressing matters involving a distant health appointment for my other child, a trip to the pharmacy for what I will lovingly call “school drugs,” and a short effort to appear at the job that pays our bills, I came home late.

“Mommy’s home, time to turn off the TV.”  Having lost half my audience here, I will continue.  We are bad parents.  We work too late and come home too tired.  Our kid watches too much TV.

“He has homework and I couldn’t get him to do it.”

Now this is the kid who the night before at 9 pm, after a special birthday dinner party, sat next to me on my bed while I studied to teach, got out his own math homework and did it.  But instead, on the following day, I can’t even find him.

I check the inside of the house and the entire yard.  I check the closets.  He’s not here.

He is found outside, climbing on my car.

Back inside, he develops an intense interest in his Lego.

I finally corner him.  “Is the reason you are running away because of what the homework is?”  I get a nod.  He tells me it is something about a story; he is going to write about Bon 12.

Bon 12 is a comic book with very small writing.  I estimate he has read maybe 20% of what is written in the boxes.  I can’t read the book – the writing is too weirdly shaped, I don’t understand the plot or the characters.  It has too many words. Comic books don’t work so well for me for reading, but I do pretty well with Ricky Robot and Lunch Lady.  I've worked to get my Hebrew reading skills up to reading to him (that was Kitah Alef for me), but when we move into Hebrew comic books, I have a tough time.

We get him to the dinner table and attempt to talk him out of Bon 12.  He says he told his teacher he is doing this book and she won’t let him change it.  He develops an intense interest in pasta and salad and becomes completely non-responsive verbally.

I decide we need a change of scene and tell him we are going out for a walk, which he is very excited about.  “See a friend!”   We take the homework, a soccer ball, my phone and a bag of bamba and start walking.  

I start reading to him from the 3 page assignment.  I start reading the first page out loud, which is addressed to parents.  “Read that to yourself” he tells me.  I read to him that he has to write the book name and author and he tells me them.  I tell him he has to write a summary including beginning, middle and end.  He tells me what happens in the book - about 4 sentences in a row, including some characters’ names, and one he has forgotten but then remembers.  I understand none of what he says but at least he is putting words together into sentences.  I start to feel a glimmer of hope.  He is speaking Hebrew, I am reading Hebrew to him but switching to English to talk to him.  I wonder distantly to what extent this is part of the problem, but having achieved 5 minutes of actual verbal communication about the homework assignment, I feel a very minor sense of victory, coupled with ongoing dread about the coming days.

We get to the park.  He takes his ball and goes to a group of boys.  The park is fairly empty, and the clientele is 90% boys on their own.  It’s about 7 pm.  Not a parent in sight.

He finds a group of four of his classmates, three of whom live right next to the park.  (We missed the memo about buying a home right next to the park.)  They have a shopping cart and are collecting wood for Lag B’Omer.   They bring the cart and unload the wood in one kid’s yard.  A dad is there, talking either to dogs or younger children, paying little attention to the boys.  When they tip the cart over and the wood spills out, the dad rights the cart for them.  Another dad, we’ll call him dad #2, rolls up in his car, coming home from work.

After about 5 minutes, Mom #2, wife of Dad #2, comes out of her house.  I ask her if the boys always come here on their own; she admits how convenient it is to live here. 

“I’m trying to talk with him about the book report,” I say, showing her the page in my hand.  She glances at it, interested but not alarmed like I am.  “Yeah,” she says, “I saw they have that but my kid forgot his book at school.”  I detect no major anxiety.  I recall, as I do each time we meet, that Mom #2 works half-time and comes home by 2 pm.

I say I don’t feel I can leave my kid here to come home on his own so I am hanging around.  “Does he have a sense of time?” she asks.  “Could you tell him to come home in half an hour?” 

I look at her like she has three heads.  If my boss, who pays my salary, asks me to come to his office in the next building in half an hour, and I am sitting at my computer, with a clock staring me in the face every second, I’d say there’s a 50-50 chance I’ll show up there on time. 

“There’s a big street between here and our house.” I say.  She knows, and I know, that the kids aren’t supposed to cross streets by themselves till age 9.  Age 8 is the most challenging age.  Ready to go but….

As if on cue, a car starts backing out of a driveway where the boys are, and one kid runs behind it into the street as it is backing, and as I draw a sharp intake of breath and start moving, my son comes behind him and does the same thing.  “Oh no, it’s not going to be like this,” I say loudly as I start running.  I’m next to my kid in about 10 seconds.  Mom #2 is still where we were standing, mid-sentence.

A difficult encounter ensues in which eventually I get my kid’s attention and convey to him that we are now leaving, and that he may not run behind a car that is backing up and must stop.  All in English, pretty loudly.  Mom #2 arrives and decides to maybe say something to her child.  I am half way down the block on the way home with my kid, with him arguing with me that the man who was backing up saw him and the other boy.

Hours later I wonder, what would it be like to be an Israeli parent, who didn’t jump, who didn’t worry, who knew her kid would understand and complete the assignment?  How is it that the native born in this crazy country, full of minefields at every turn, can be so relaxed and confident?  Would language, a sense of belonging, a part time job, a husband who came home late and earned a good salary, a quiet son, any of the above, ever give me that elusive sense of “yihyeh beseder?”

Sad at Christmas

I'm Jewish.  I'm married to someone who has been Jewish for 19 of the 20 some years I have known her.  Maybe finally, after all this time, I am willing to say outright - we're in the wrong place at Christmas.

I did not grow up missing Christmas.  I had a full life of Jewish holidays.  On Christmas day my family, like I assumed many English type Jewish families, had a roast chicken and a Christmas pudding.  The fun was in seeing my father try to light it. 

When I was in high school, my rabbi told me we shouldn't be celebrating Christmas at home in any way, and over the years that followed I came to somewhat agree with him.  The day didn't bother me or affect me one way or another.  The commercialism of the season could be wearing, but it soon passed, and I continued the full life of holidays I knew.

When Alen and I got together, I don't remember Christmas being much.  We visited with friends who celebrated, once with her relatives in England.  Another time we were with her family in Trinidad.  Mostly we were in our home and world.  We called her family on the day, but that was about it.

Then Alen's mom died.  The next Christmas in Israel was agonizing.  Here no one knows and no one celebrates.  Alen's mom was missing, Alen wasn't with her family, and no one even knew or thought to call because it was a hard day.  It passed for most of our friends without thought.  Just two months into her grief, Alen was miserable and I was miserable for her. 

After the kids came, we spent a couple of Christmases with her family in Trinidad and they were fun.  Then Lucas died.  The following Christmas was (at least predictably) a day of many tears in our home.  And the second Christmas after Lucas died, we were with her family, with our kids, strengthening bonds, making new memories, and also sharing grief for those who are no longer with us.

Today, the third Christmas since Lucas died, I feel we are in the wrong place.

I don't want Christmas for any religious reasons.  I don't consider whether halachically I should or should not eat a festive meal or give or receive a gift.  I just want our family to be with the people we care most about, enjoying a day that means something to them.

Alen and Gabi are watching the Queen's Christmas message on TV, there's a smell of Christmas cookies coming from the oven, but I'd rather be in a big living room with a big tree in the hills of Maracas Valley.  Merry Christmas.

Parve Tuna Pie

I was looking for parve tuna casserole but came across this recipe instead.  It's something easy and parve - I modified what I found online and it came out pretty good.  This is not for the pretentious healthy food types, it's for people who serve stuff like hot dogs and mac & cheese.  But then if your daughter stops eating milk and meat, well, here's something you can still serve.

Here it is:

2 cans tuna, drained
One onion
One carrot
About 2/3 cup frozen peas
3 eggs
salf
pepper
1 teaspoon soup mix if you want
1 tablespoon mayonnaise
frozen pastry (parve) - the kind that comes in a roll, defrosted some

Chop the onion and carrot and fry them with some oil and salt.  Let them cool.  Mix the tuna, eggs, frozen peas, salt and pepper, soup mix if desired, and mayonnaise.  Add the cooled onion and carrot.  Mix well.

Put one layer of crust on the bottom of a rectangular pan (or whatever pan you want to use).  Spread the tuna mixture on top.  Put another layer of pastry on top.  Bake at 350/170 for about 40 minutes until it looks done. 

The cooked tuna is less strong tasting than you would think, and the pie is sweet.  If you want, you could add an apple to the recipe.  Gabi, Alen and I all liked it - of course Sasha did not touch it!

Trust and the flower pot

I have a flower pot on my dresser that I received as a gift when I was a junior in high school.  This is a story about how I got it and about the things I have come to wonder in recent years about what it means to me.

I took a class in high school called “Communications”.  It was a popular class, taught by a popular teacher.  This was the late 70s and I think it’s fair to say the teacher was an aging hippie and his class was definitely influenced by the spirit of the times.  Having been preyed up on as a child, I actually kept my distance from him.  I had a radar for adults who violated boundaries.  I had already worked to get switched out of a class where the teacher was known for smoking pot with students.  This teacher also had that reputation, as well as a group of much cooler girls than I who surrounded him.  Maybe there were guys too, I just don’t remember them as well.

I liked the class.  It was all about the ways we communicate with each other – pop psychology type stuff.  There was a retreat too.  We talked about issues like honesty, trust, you know. 

I think that on the last day of class we were supposed to bring a gift for one person in the class.   I think I brought something for a girl named Jill, someone who was much more popular than me in the complicated social order of the high school of 2000 kids where this took place but whom I had become somewhat close with over the class. 

I was very surprised when the teacher chose me, of all the students, to give a gift to.  He gave me a spider plant, quite a healthy one, with babies on it, in a small flower pot.  He said that he had had the plant and tended it for quite some time.  He said that he was giving it to me because of all the people in the class, he trusted me.  He trusted me, he said, not just to tell me something personal, like we had practiced doing with people in the class, but he trusted me in the way that if he ever wanted something done, I was the person in the class he would trust that he could turn to and that I would get it done.

I can’t begin to tell the value to me of this gift and of what he said that day.  I guess the fact that this plant, and after it was long gone the pot it grew in, stayed with me in every dorm room, home or apartment I ever had, made aliyah with me and still sits on my dresser 36 years later tells that tale.  In a high school of 2000 kids, in a life in which I felt often invisible, unpopular or unimportant, that gift and statement had a lot of traction and helped shape the positive ways I saw myself for many years to come.

And yet…

Some not so long while ago, something happened and a friend came to believe that I was not trustworthy at all.  As I reflected on this for some weeks, I thought about the flower pot, and I began to wonder about whether I had ever been the person the teacher said I was.  It seemed clear that :  the teacher wasn’t trustworthy, he was smoking pot with students; I wasn’t trustworthy – my parents couldn’t trust me and just the year before, for example, I had been stealing pills from the medicine cabinet of people I babysat for; the gift wasn’t trustworthy – what quality teacher singles out one student in front of the class to praise?  And years later, I didn’t feel like the person who could be counted on to get things done – I felt then, and often feel now, that I make too many commitments to too many people and can’t possibly carry them all out.  Sometimes it seems like the only way I can be trustworthy - to myself and others, is to cut back radically on what I commit to, and on who I am to others.  The more people expect of me, the more likely I am to disappoint.  Or something like that.

I would like to digress here to a story about a person I once met whom I think was named Lyn, but I fear if I go down that road I won’t get back to the present.  I'll save that story for later.

So….

Lately I have met two people who feel that the world is not a trustworthy place and that people in general cannot be trusted.  And I have found these people to be pretty hard or impossible to rely on.  Leading me to believe that how trustworthy we are may be connected to how much we trust others.  But beyond that, I have also noticed that my trustworthiness, my ability to follow through, help, stay committed, has been less than optimal when I have dealt with these people.  It is almost as though I have become less trustworthy when dealing with people who don't expect me to be trustworthy.  Or something like that.

So the flip side of this is that because my teacher said he trusted me, I worked all these years to be the person he saw me as.  I am not sure I have succeeded, but I believe I have tried harder because of what his words meant to me.  Which is something for each of us teachers to think about.

Many years ago, Reb Zalman gave me a blessing that I should see myself as G-d sees me.  This week, as we were studying Psalm 33, I asked my students if they believe in hashgacha pratit (that G-d oversees our individual actions).  One of my students said the following and I knew he had written the end of this story.  He said, “If people are created in the image of G-d, and if people see my deeds, then I believe some part of G-d sees my deeds.”  So I'm still grateful that my teacher in that moment saw, maybe not who I completely was, but who I could maybe become.  And that, with his shortcomings, he helped me get closer and work harder on being the person he saw I could be.